Friday, May 12, 2017

Remember the smugness from Silicon Valley as Tower Records and other music retailers shut down? Turns out it may not have just been the income transfer from ad supported piracy that did it.

Amazon showrooms–aka bricks and mortar retail–are in an unrecoverable tailspin that will affect neighbors and communities across the country and around the world. As Victoria Craig reports in Fox Business:

Department stores, long-ago darlings of the retail industry, have found themselves in the bargain bin.

A combination of disappointing first-quarter sales at stores open at least a year and continued difficulty transitioning meaningfully into the e-commerce space weighed heavily on shares of JCPenney (JCP), Macy’s (M), Dillards (DDS), Nordstrom (JWN), and Kohl’s (KSS) this week. While shares of e-commerce giant Amazon (AMZN) continued to trade near record highs, combined, the five department-store retailers shed more than $4.2 billion in market value this week.

But the department-store woes aren’t a result of consumers’ unwillingness to spend wages that have been slowly rising over the last year. A trio of economic data reports on Friday morning – including April retail sales, consumer price inflation and May consumer sentiment – revealed shoppers spent at the most robust pace of the last three months as prices edged higher and sentiment climbed.

It’s the shift to online that’s socking these stocks as the companies rush to slim store count, streamline their operators and leverage mobile platforms and digital technologies.

Not paying for showroom space is not the only thing Amazon is good at grifting. The company is also a market leader in stiffing songwriters by filing bogus looking “address unknown” NOIs.